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| Mid-Town was founded in 1987 in a joint effort of Hans Tieleman and Rene Bakker to set a new standard for dance-oriented record stores. They felt that back in the days you had to be a friend of the record store manager in order to be able to buy the best records. They would change things around, create a positive atmosphere in their store in which everybody would feel welcome. With opening their first store in the south of Rotterdam the success story began, selling the first dance classics, italo and early house records.
When the first store was up and running they began expanding their business by opening a second store in the centre of Rotterdam. This was also when the cooperation with Paul Elstak started, as he was the new shop manager and had a unique view on house music. While establishing the first record labels, they started up Rotterdam Records together with Paul, which caused for a major success with the third release: Rotterdam Termination Source - Poing. This amazing hit sold thousands of copies worldwide and helped Mid-town to become one of the fastest growing independent record companies.
This growth resulted in the purchase of a warehouse in the south of Rotterdam, which still is the current headquarter of Mid-Town, from where all distribution activities were expanded. The in-house record labels were also diversified with labels like X-Trax Records (run by DJ Misjah) and Blue Records (run by the former Klubbheads), signing artists like Mark Van Dale, Enrico and Lock 'n Load. Last mentioned artists scored a major hit in the late nineties with Blow Ya Mind, which single sold almost half a million copies worldwide.
Meanwhile Mid-Town had also started more Hardcore labels, like Terror Traxx and Forze Records, now being able to release a larger variety of tracks. Especially Happy Hardcore releases became a big commercial success, with Paul Elstak's releases like "Rainbow In The Sky" and "Love You More". On the other hand producers like Neophyte became very popular with a more raw sound. This resulted in the establishment of Neophyte Records in 1999. When the Hardcore scene dozed off for a little while, they continued to release high quality records, which caused great popularity when Hardcore had its resurrection in 2002. Nowadays it still is one of the most popular Hardcore labels, also selling lots of merchandising.
With the resurrection of Hardcore also came the birth of a new form of hard house music, called Hardstyle. Mid-Town was one of the first to see the potential in this new style and launched Seismic Records. 8 years later it is still one of the leading labels with heavy weights Beholder, Balistic and Max Enforcer as the main artists. Sublabel Tremble Tracks, releasing more jump-oriented tracks, also became a big success with artists like Bad Boyz and Genius.
All these developments were quite noticeable, but behind the scenes there is a lot more going on than just releasing records. For example, Mid-Town is the exclusive distributor for over 100 international labels and sublabels. The relatively new publishing department started in 2006 and has been developing rapidly ever since. The events department organizes multiple events per year, of which the enormous productions Nightmare In Rotterdam and Nightmare Outdoor attract thousands of party people every year. So you see, it's safe to say that Mid-Town is a very diverse company which delivers overall quality with passion for dance music in every way possible!
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